PALM BEACH POETRY FESTIVAL Invites Poets & Poetry Fans to Community Events

Susan R. Williamson, Director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and Dr. Blaise Allen, Director of Community Outreach, today invited local poets and poetry fans to seven upcoming public events.

---

September 30 - 3:30 pm (Saturday)

7th Annual 100,000 Poets and Musicians for Change

American Rocks Bar and Grill

1600 East Hillsboro Blvd. in Deerfield Beach

FREE

The public is invited to participate in what could be the largest poetry reading in history. The Palm Beach Poetry Festival is hosting this annual open-mic event in partnership with 100 Thousand Poets for Change. This global happening will be taking place at the same time in over 1,000 venues in 118 countries. Poets will read and perform work to promote social, political, environmental sustainability, and change, simultaneously across the planet. Attendees are welcome to read their own work or favorite poems by other poets. Between poetry readings, special guest musicians will play songs for peace. Attendees are welcome to play or sing along. As in previous years, the event will be photographed by Dr. Allen and archived by Stanford University. Must be 21 years old to attend.

October 7 - 12:30 pm (Saturday)

Poetry Workshop

Going Hybrid: The Lyric Essay

With Monica Isabel Restrepo

Old School Square

51 N. Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach

$10 per person

Poetry and prose? Writers often reach new depths in their work when they immerse themselves in the nebulous poetry/non-fiction divide. In this workshop, poets will use lyric essay techniques to prompt and guide their work. Attendees will read and learn from different types of lyric essays including braided, flash, collage, and hermit crab. By opening themselves up to hybrid possibilities, participants will see their work spill into new territory, either revisiting existing themes in new ways and/or plunging into previously unexplored spaces.

Bio: Ms. Restrepo is a lyric essayist who earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University.

October 18 - 12:30 pm (Wednesday)

Bards of a Feather

Round Robin Poetry Reading

Green Cay Nature Preserve, Community Room

12800 Hagen Ranch Road in Boynton Beach

FREE

Participants should bring up to four poems, original or not, to share with the group. Non-poets are welcome to attend.

November 4 - 12:30 pm (Saturday)

Poetry Workshop

An Elegy is Just an Ode in Disguise:

Singing Our Losses

With Julie Marie Wade

Old School Square

51 N. Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach

$10 per person

This generation-based workshop will explore the emulative possibilities of elegies written by poets as diverse in voice and style as Jericho Brown, Eugenia Leigh, Larry Levis, and Muriel Rukeyser. It will also consider what the elegy borrows from the ode, its lyric cousin, in paying homage to a beloved person, place or thing.

Bio: Ms. Wade is an award-winning author of four collections of poetry and four collections of prose. She teaches in the Creative Writing program at Florida International University and is a published reviewer.

December 2 - 12:30 (Saturday)

Poetry Workshop

Poetry and Activism

With Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello

Old School Square

51 N. Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach

$10 per person

This workshop explores how to write poetry rooted in activism that is persuasive rather than alienating. Effective political poetry requires more than an opinionated stance; thoughtfulness, accuracy, and compassion are also necessary to win over readers. To understand this balance, attendees will study overtly political work such as Audre Lorde and Danez Smith alongside more gentle poems of social change by Walt Whitman and Ross Gay in order to generate their own poems of justice.

Bio: Ms. Cancio-Bello in an award-winning author whose work has appeared in Best New Poets, The Georgia Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is a program coordinator for the Miami Book Fair.

December 6 -12:30 pm (Wednesday)

Bards of a Feather

Round Robin Poetry Reading

Green Cay Nature Preserve, Community Room

12800 Hagen Ranch Road in Boynton Beach

FREE

Participants should bring up to four poems, original or not, to share with the group. Non-poets are welcome to attend.

December 13 - 10:30 am (Wednesday)

Alzheimer's Poetry Project

Holiday Poetry Reading and Sing Along

Sunrise Assisted Living, Brighton Gardens

6341 Via De Sonrisa Del Sur in Boca Raton

FREE

Spread the joy of poetry at this special holiday event. All ages welcome.

---

The 14th annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival will be held next January 15-20 at Old School Square in Delray Beach. The Festival features top poets at numerous ticketed public events, including readings, talks, interviews, panel discussions and more. Nine workshops will be offered for which applications are required. Special Guest Poet will be Coleman Barks, a major poet and the world's leading expert on 13th century poet Rumi, the founder of Sufism - as well as the likely namesake of one of the recently born twins of Beyoncé and Jay Z.

The distinguished poets who will lead poetry-writing workshops at the Festival include Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Chard deNiord, Beth Ann Fennelly, Ross Gay, Rodney Jones, Phillis Levin, Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Tim Seibles; with individual conferences offered by nationally acclaimed poets: Lorna Knowles Blake, Sally Bliumis-Dunn and Nickole Brown. In addition, Slam Champions Elizabeth Acevedo and G Yamazawa will co-host a Sizzling Spoken Word event, and there will be a Special Tribute to Poet Thomas Lux, a longtime supporter of the Festival who passed away earlier this year.

The 2018 Palm Beach Poetry Festival is sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; Morgan Stanley & The Legacy Group of Atlanta; the Cultural Council of Palm County, the Palm Beach County Tourism Development Council and the Board of Commissioners of Palm Beach County; The Palm Beach Post; Visit Florida; WLRN; and Murder on the Beach, Delray Beach's independent bookseller.

For more information about the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, visit www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.